


Catch Me

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Fever, Fever Dreams, Gen, Hugs ahoy, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Parent(s), Nightmares, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 05:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20421020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: His parents were falling in front of him, and he couldn’t catch them.This had happened before. He knew what was coming. He couldn’t stop it.Dick’s ears filled with the roar of the crowd, the tumult pressing down on him like corpses, pinning him in place. They were cheering, not screaming, urging the spangled bodies high above to climb higher, to step out onto the narrow platforms, to jump.They didn’t know. No one knew but him.





	Catch Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jerseydevious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/gifts).

His parents were falling in front of him, and he couldn’t catch them.

This had happened before. He knew what was coming. He couldn’t stop it.

Dick’s ears filled with the roar of the crowd, the tumult pressing down on him like corpses, pinning him in place. They were cheering, not screaming, urging the spangled bodies high above to climb higher, to step out onto the narrow platforms, to jump.

They didn’t know. No one knew but him.

_Stop! STOP!_

His screams were drowned out, a strangled whisper that died before it reached his own ears, much less the ears that needed to hear.

The big top tent shuddered, rocked by the energy, the noise, the frenzy of the crowd.

He had to get to them. He had to save them.

Dick could feel the sweat drip down the back of his neck and into the collar of his suit. He could feel the air, oppressively full and stifling, wrap over him like a soaked towel. He couldn’t move. The raked sand clung to his soft-soled shoes and climbed over the tops of his feet. 

_No._

They reached the platform. The scene swayed, rocking with the moan of the storm outside, the howls of the crowd.

He watched his parents climb their spinning platforms, too far away, too high. He couldn’t see their faces. His father was already a jigsaw of broken bones. His mother was the gleam of a too-wide smile.

_Please! PLEASE stop!_

The ringmaster’s voice boomed, mighty like an elephant’s trumpet, unstoppable like a thunderclap. The crowd was a smear of Pollock splatters. The tent flap lashed out with the wind and pinned his arms to his sides. The sand was up to his knees.

This had happened before. He couldn’t stop it.

His parents were dying and no one would listen.

In the shadows, a clown honked his horn, the squawk like the blare of a speeding car on rain-darkened road.

The sand climbed. He couldn’t move. The canvas tightened. He couldn’t breathe.

His mother waved. His father bowed. They lifted their bars.

Dick screamed.

They jumped.

He woke up with the cry still ripping through his throat and his hand thrown out into empty air.

Dick collapsed forward, weeping and wheezing in equal measure. Strong arms caught him, lifting him back onto the bed before he could hit the floor.

He didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to dream again, didn’t want to get caught in that sickening loop that had played over and over and over, spurred on by the heat tearing through his head and prickling down his spine.

He must have said so, must have babbled something semi-intelligible now that his mouth was free, now that his oppressed lungs could strain enough to push out sound, because the arms gathered him again and lifted him from the bed. The open air licked at his fever-tight skin as the tangled sheets fell away.

“Shhh, Dick, shhhh.” A cheek rested atop his head, whiskered skin pressed to sweaty curls. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“They’re dead. They’re _dead_. I couldn’t save them,” Dick wept. He let out a low moan that faded into hacking coughs.

“I know. I know.” The arms moved, muscles hardening to shift Dick so his burning face rested against cool, soft fabric. A fridge-chilled washcloth wiped the tears from his cheek and the sweat from his brow. “You’ve caught the flu and the fever is bringing up memories. I’m sorry. But you’re safe.”

“I want my mom.” Dick hiccuped and curled his limbs in tight, fists pressed to the bridge of his nose. He trembled in every muscle, in every tendon, in every centimeter of his marrow. He ached with fever and exhaustion and grief. He wanted his dad to cradle him like a baby. He wanted his mom to sing him to sleep. He wanted to remember what their faces looked like. “I want my _mom_.”

The voice—the Bruce, because he remembered that much, even in the delirium of illness—didn’t speak. But the arms continued to rock him, and the lips pressed to his forehead and stayed there, soft and dry and real. A throat ground down to gravel by years of wear hummed a lullaby, soft baritone to the tenor of his tears.

Dick drifted, on occasion slipping back beneath the boiling waves of his fever, but every time he resurfaced, Bruce was still there, cradling him on the cooled wood floor of his room. The fingers with the callouses he knew well scraped against his lips as they fed him medicine and thumbed away still-dripping tears.

At one point, a new concern, sharp and vivid against the blood-smeared backdrop of his nightmares, gripped him, and Dick gasped.

“B,” he rasped, “B, don’t make me go to school tomorrow. I don’t want—“

But he was already being shushed, the reassurances rumbling in the chest beneath his head.

“No school,” Bruce assured him. “Just rest, chum.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Bruce promised. That was enough. Dick let himself drift again.

The crowd roared. The tent shook. The end didn’t come. He fell instead.

“Bruce. _Bruce._”

“I’m still here, chum.”

The arms were back, lifting him from clean sheets that smelled like lavender. Dick pressed his closed, swollen eyes into Bruce’s shoulder. “Don’t go.”

“I won’t. I’m here.”

“I don’t want you to die, too.”

“I’m here, chum. I’ve got you. You’re in your room. Everything’s okay.”

“Don’t go.”

“I won’t.”

More medicine. More washcloths pressed to his forehead and dabbed against his throat, then lifted away and refreshed. Voices murmured at the edge of his hearing, no more than ghosts on a low wind breathing words like how long and fever and rest. Bruce held him up and lifted a glass to his lips, then held him up again as he vomited long, clinging strands of bile into a shallow basin.

He teetered on the narrow platform, the sand shimmering far below. Broken arms reached up to him. A too-wide smile called for him to fly.

Bruce caught him every time as he woke, strong arms and soft shirt and gentle assurances brushing over fever-bright shreds of dreams.

The calliope whistled and the band jangled, tinny tunes fading with the echoes of the crowd to become nothing more than a receding memory sucked out with the tide of his fever.

Hands tangled in his hair, smoothing sweaty curls that had long since been combed free of knots. He could hear a heartbeat against his ear, slow and sure, a steady drum to march away the last of the terrors.

Dick shifted but didn’t open his eyes. He felt ragged and miserable, throat scratched raw and skin still tight with dried sweat, but the fever had finally lifted from his body, and the air around him felt light and empty.

He was so tired. Did he dare sleep?

“Father?” called someone quietly, voice high and young. “Will Richard be alright?”

“Yes. He just needs to rest now. Tell Alfred we’ll try some light broth in a few hours.”

Dick sighed and flexed his fingers against an arm. Broth sounded awful, but it was good to hear he’d be okay. He still didn’t want to go to school, but that seemed less important than it had been.

“You with us, chum?” Bruce murmured in his ear. A hand left Dick’s hair to settle over top the fingers brushing against Bruce’s arm.

Dick hummed wearily. “F’l awful.”

“I know. But you’re out of the worst of it now. You should sleep.”

“Don’t wanna dream. I—“

“I know, love, I know.” The fingers squeezed and held, a comforting grip that helped Dick feel still for the first time in an eternity.

Bruce hummed an old tune, something low and swayed that made his chest rumble beneath Dick’s cheek like a monstrous cat’s purr. Dick sighed.

“I’m’na sleep,” he decided even as a yawn slurred his words.

“Good.”

“Stay?”

“I promise.”

And that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I no lie prepped this fic and wrote it a scant week before coming down with the flu and the first fever I've had in... a decade or so? Not as bad as Dick's, thank goodness. But still. I feel like I did it to myself.
> 
> Also in trying to name this fic I listened to "Tightrope" from The Greatest Showman again and made myself very emotional.


End file.
